Absolutely amazing

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Though this mesmerizing movie is supposedly about revenge, it's really a story about honor. The honor a man carries for his family. The honor he shares among men like himself. The honor he clings to when everything else in his life is gone. It's the sense of obligation that drives men to do the most horrible of deeds and make the most noble of sacrifices. With the deliberate direction of Johnnie To and a cast of smoldering intensity, Vengeance is the sort of film that you can't stop watching.After his daughter and her family are gunned down in China, a Frenchman with the fashion sense of Boris Badenov and a face that gets odder the closer you are sets out for revenge. A stranger in a strange land, Francis Costello (Johnny Hallyday) hires three expert killers (Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Ka Tung Lam and Sute Lam) to find the men responsible for his family tragedy and help him take his revenge. But a surprise found along the way and a secret Costello is keeping to himself force all four of them to decide what kind of men they are and in what sort of world they're willing to live.The main thing to know about Vengeance, other than that it's quite good, is that this motion picture is dominated by silence. There's very little dialog, less of a soundtrack and even the gun battles are striking for how they echo in the quiet. Except for a few blips of expository dialog, the storytelling here is entirely visual. Director To exhibits a master's touch in framing his actors' movements, expressions and even postures to beam this tale through your eyes and imprint it on your brain.The action scenes here are magnificently realized and striking in their use of space. From a running gun battle through moonlit woods to a shootout in a building, the way events unfold in a linear fashion is far more compelling than the most frenetic blur of jump cuts and camera movement. It captures the athleticism of real human movement without exceeding into the realm of stylized combat ballet.Johnny Hallyday may be the star of Vengeance but I found him too odd looking a duck to connect with. It took me a while simply to get used to the fact that he wasn't wearing some poorly molded prosthetic make up. For me, the standout of the cast was Anthony Wong Chau-Sang as Kwai, the de factor leader of the three killers hired by Costello. He draws your eyes in like magnetic iron and then reflects your gaze back onto Hallyday. Chau-Sang plays Kwai as seeing that Costello used to be the sort of man Kwai has always wanted to believe he was, helping to define both men's characters and giving the viewer a true north upon which to fix their eyes. It's Chau-Sang that elevates this story and banishes all petty and craven motivations and concerns.Now, it doesn't make a lot of sense that in one scene Costello and his killers have the aim of drunken Sleestaks and in the rest they can shoot like Annie Oakley. The secret Costello carries is also more plot device than anything else. Those are minor quibbles, though.Vengeance is a great example of how playing against convention can breathe new life into the most clichéd premise. Instead of being hot and loud and insistent, this movie is cool and calm and attractively implacable. It will leave you wanting to see more work by Johnnie To and Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, which is always one of the highest compliments you can give any film.

Reading the plot line, I was expecting a cross between "Under siege" and "A history of violence" - movies which I liked both. What an utter disappointment! I guess I wasn't familiar with Johnny To's work, as the others who gave the movie high marks seem to be.The movie doesn't even make an attempt at making sense! The plot, where it exists, is dubious. Action scenes start in the daylight and end in the middle of the night (or the other way round). Characters do things that don't make any sense. After the first half of the movie, I tried to watch it as a dark comedy, but even that angle failed. "Rambo, the deleted scenes" is probably a more apt description of this movie.

As a Johnnie To fan, I have to say, that this is one of his weaker works. But it sill has a standard that some others may never reach (in my opinion that is of course). While there are themes of some of his other movies here too (loyalty etc.) and there are some nice character beats, as a whole there seems something lacking. But not only that, even small details have been done better.One scene for example, where our main character puts a gun together has been done with much more style and class in the Korean movie "A bittersweet life". Also the ending of that scene feels rushed and somehow wrong. The main actors sometimes have to speak English (although it seems that some of them have been dubbed, they still learned phonetically, so it doesn't appear as dubbed) and you can tell, they are not feeling good doing this.While our main character has a flaw, there are still quite a few things that shouldn't have happened quite like they do in the movie (pictures for example, and you will know what I mean, if you watch the movie). And while the flaw is a nice touch, it also almost works against the movie.Again, a good movie in my book, but still quite a bit off ... what I came to expect from Mr. To!

Oh my - When Billy The Kid met Memento met Tokyo Eyes met The Limey on steroids… The only film ever in which I enjoyed watching Johnny Hallyday. Anthony Wong is just bloody amazing, as in everything I saw with him - not much I concede, according to his length impressing filmography on IMDb.I discovered Johnny To a few years back when The Mission came out, and since then, I am trying to watch anything he did. I skipped this one when it came out, being frightened by the infamous French/Belgian 60's idol presence - I just can't stand him as a public person. I was so wrong. Even though the first Hallyday's dialogue are just plain dreadful (the hospital scene at the beginning), Johnny To managed to take control and silence him. And the miracle works out. When you forget even about the meaning of the word, what does vengeance means ?